Indian workers in Saudi limbo

If you are lucky, you may get paid

Robi pointed out this post by the Religious Policeman – Indian workers remain unpaid eight months after a Saudi labour court decided in their favour. Their papers remain in the hands of their employer, so neither can they return to India nor seek employment within Saudi Arabia. Only an intervention by the Indian consular officials prevented their plight from worsening.

Official Saudi attitude towards foreign labour has changed from the usual apathy to active antipathy. In such an environment, it is not unusual to that Saudi employers to abuse their foreign workers with impunity.

Chan’ad reports that in a recent case of similar abuse in Bahrain, the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights took up the issue. As Chan’ad points out, while it may be too much to expect every single case of abuse to be taken up by workers’ rights groups, action taken by civic society signals that such abuses are unacceptable. That is the first step towards a more enlightened policy to foreign labour.